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Re: apple 2 usb

Michael J. Mahon wrote:


But if you want a mouse to look to the Apple like an Apple mouse,
or a joystick like an Apple joystick, or a keyboard like the Apple
keyboard, there is serious work to be done on the Apple II side.

In the case of the keyboard, for example, 8-bit Apple programs
expect the keyboard ASCII and any-key-down signals to appear at
specific memory-mapped addresses.  That is not an easy adaptation
for any peripheral card.
A few pages of VHDL is sufficient - I've already done it to convert input from a PS2 keyboard to emulate an AY3600 (the keyboard chip in a IIe) within an FPGA implementation of an Apple... would fit in a small CPLD or PIC. 


If a card presents itself as a smartport disk device, then it
cannot also appear to be something else at the same time.  The
"driver" problem is an essential part of any solution.
Depends on the hardware... an FPGA on the Apple II bus could easily appear as multiple devices. 


Having a partially standardized interface to a class of HIDs
on the USB side helps, but does not solve the problem of
making the device usable to existing Apple programs, which
severely limits the utility of a USB port.


Agreed, HID is neither here nor there as far as the Apple is concerned.

Regards,

--
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"